Universities: Financial Sustainability

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Desmond Swayne

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

I welcome the measures we are putting in place to increase course innovation and flexibility within the HE sector. I passionately believe that that is the future and where we need to go. People may need to train and retrain across the course of their lives, so we will need course provision that allows people to access the HE market at every stage of their lives, right the way through their 20s and 30s. Two-year degrees are not a silver bullet—in fact, they were put forward in a Labour party amendment to the Higher Education and Research Act—but we have tried to ensure that they open up the market and we have encouraged more HE providers to take up two-year degrees. At the moment, they have been capped by the financial ability or the lack of financial ability to do so. Ultimately, it is £22,000 for a degree as opposed to £27,000. It is not necessarily an increase in fees; it provides people with an opportunity to study at a time of their choosing.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

What would make universities less financially sustainable than making them entirely dependent on Government finance, particularly if it is a Labour Government?

[Chris Skidmore]

Absolutely. If we began to return to a stage where universities are financed entirely by taxation it would not only put an increased burden of £12 billion on the taxpayer—an increase of about 2p to 3p on income tax rates—but mean that HE would have to compete with Government funding priorities on the NHS and welfare. Ultimately, we would return to student number caps and the situation we see in publicly funded universities in other countries where people struggle to find seats in lecture theatres. It is right that we have a sustainable financial system that protects students’ futures.